1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a blind spot detection system, and more specifically, to a blind spot detection system capable of effectively simplifying a structure, reducing costs, and enhancing sensing accuracy.
2. Description of the Prior Art
According to the statistics, most of traffic accidents are related to drivers' distraction. If a driver is alerted at 0.5 seconds before being likely to have a collision, it can avoid at least 60% of rear-end collisions, 30% of head-on collisions and 50% of road ramp related traffic accidents. If alerted before one second, it can avoid 90% of traffic accidents. The statistics shows traffic accidents can be effectively reduced if the drives have enough reaction time. Therefore, a blind spot detection (BSD) system, which is a smart vehicle equipment, is developed for such needs.
The BSD system is a safety protection technique for vehicles, and utilizes a radar sensing technique of millimeter wave to achieve early warning. More specifically, the BSD system uses an image self-recognition method of machine vision, to detect obstacles in blind spot areas on left/right/front sides of a vehicle. If the BSD system detects that a specific obstacle exists in a blind spot area, the BSD system actively sends out a message of light or sound, for example, to a driver, so that the driver can determine a driving direction accordingly, to avoid a traffic accident due to the driver's careless or blind side of vision.
Generally speaking, the BSD system deploys sensors in rear and/or front bumpers of a vehicle, emits millimeter wave radio signals, and receives corresponding reflecting signals, to determine whether there is an obstacle, such as another vehicle or a person, within a specific range. Additionally, in order to improve determination accuracy to avoid erroneous determination or alarming, the BSD system requires vehicle related information such as velocity and angle deviation of the vehicle, to determine whether to start BSD or perform debugging; however, the vehicle related information is acquired from an electric control unit of the vehicle through a transmission line or wire. Under such a condition, connection of wires in the vehicle become more complex, especially for a modern smart vehicle, which is equipped with more and more functions and accessories (e.g., collision-warning detection radar, lane departure warning radar, reversing radar, anti-lock brake system, electric stable control system, etc.). Meanwhile, data robust is required during transmission, to avoid interferences from vehicle electric elements or environment noise. For example, ignition system, battery, wipers, electric windows, electric seats, air conditioner, radio, fuel supply system, clutch system, etc. can generate noise; or high-voltage, temperature/humidity changes of external environment may affect stability or accuracy of data transmission.
Moreover, data output from a vehicle electric control unit may not match a data specification of the BSD system, and it needs to transform the transmission data again, therefore delaying the data operation needed for real-time synchronization and causing time delays.
In conclusion, a known BSD system needs to obtain the vehicle related information such as the velocity and the angle deviation from the electric control unit inside the vehicle, and it increases the difficulty of deploying and also decreases the convenience. Therefore, an improvement for the prior art is necessary.